Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Day 18: 4 Bar No More

Today was probably the end of the our 4 bar intake prototype. We had some goals for the intake design and it does meet some of those goals but we believe we can get comparable performance from a much simpler intake design. As we tweaked this design the best grip and intaking occured without the rear wheels even touching the cube and if you don't need the rear wheels than you don't need the 4 bar.

Pneumatic Punch

Since the first week we knew that if we couldn't get the intake wheels to launch a cube the way we wanted we'd probably need to use a pneumatic punch. We had done some very basic tests the first few days of build season but we hand't mounted a cylinder to an intake until tonight.

This is a simple prototype but it shows the proof of concept to allow us to punch the cube up and in to the scale or to the back of a switch plate.

- Spectrum

“It is a mistake to think that moving fast is the same as actually going somewhere.” - Steve Goodier